So I may or may not have dropped my month old S3 in a (clean) toilet today... Basically: It fell in, within a second I had yanked it out. Immediately I emptied it of the battery/sim/SD card, and went to town on it with paper towels. I got it bone dry, stuffed bits in the headphones/USB ports as best I could, then reassembled it and tried it. All seemed fine. The signal was gone, but a little later it came back, so I relaxed. Later still I plugged in the headphones that come with the phone to make a call. I took it off vibrate and noticed no sound... I made the call but the screen went black, and nothing would happen. I removed the battery, replaced, and it came back on. I tested music, ringtones etc - no sound at all. I also tested the camera, that worked fine, although the lense was foggy. I've had a bit of a Google, and I know about the water damage indicators - as far as I know there's one behind the battery, and one on the battery itself? I've heard differing things so may be wrong here.. I can't post pictures, but there's a little white square in the bottom of the battery bay, with purple X's across it. These are intact and haven't bled out or anything. Does this show water damage, or not? Also not sure if I found it on the battery, all I can see that might be it is a little black rectangle on the bottom of it, where the connectors are. It's just plain black. I just recently registered the phone for insurance I get free with my bank account, and it specified water damage is covered, so if nothing else I have that to fall back on... but can anyone tell me anything else I can do? I half think that simply leaving it out, disassembled overnight to dry out might be enough. Maybe in rice instead, not sure. Any thoughts? Thanks in advance!
Huge mistake turning it on right away. You should always remove the battery and throw everything in a bag of rice for a couple of days.
yeah for future reference if it ever happens again - don't turn it on until it is fully dried. However too late now but all might not be lost. Switch off remove battery and put in a bag of rice in a warm place for a day then see how it goes. My gf spilt water on her iphone and didn't switch it off. The earpiece stopped working and it basically seemed like a gonner but when I got hold of it I turned it off and put it on a radiator in a bag of rice. I didn't expect it to work as it had been left switched on but amazingly the next day it was fully functioning again!
I did this today with my Samsung Galaxy Y Duos smartphone, and would love to know what ultimately happened to your phone, as it seems you did the exact same 'wrong' thing as me: turned it on before fully dry. I immediately dried mine as much as I could with a towel. Then I tried to open it up so as to dry the insides as well. I couldn't open it even after unscrewing the screws. At that point, I did what I'd forgotten reading before was important not to do: turned it on. At first, I was relieved to see the welcome screen. Then my heart sank as this started turning from black to white, and the welcome message faded and became illegible. I then went online and found out about sinking the components in a bag of uncooked rice, which is where they've been for about the past ten hours. What I'd really like to know (and have been unable to find out via Google) is whether there's still hope in the light of what happened when I turned the phone on, or whether doing that was most likely the kiss of death. Of course, I'll find out in two or three days when I remove the phone from the rice. But it might help my anxiety levels in the meantime to hear from you on whether yours is ok now! Thanks so much!!
I'll second the bag of rice. Also, if you got the phone from Orange, consider getting Orange Care. It's an expense at
